Is it just me or does Assassin's Creed Revelations suck?

It's a serious question. Did I just start sucking at AC or has this game changed in a really bad way?

TL;DR: 1) You can get hit during combo animations, 2)counters seem unreasonable for most of their swings, 3) den defense is retarded, 4) notoriety is a pain to manage and I only do it to keep from having to do den defense (has no effect on enemy awareness), 5) awareness (for templars and roof guards) is always in instant engagement status, 6) climbing seems haphazard, and 7) the rooftops are not worth occupying for the riflemen. In conclusion, all they had to do was not mess with the basic things that were still there in AC:B but they did and as a result I am frustrated the entire time I play this game. I do not recommend. Rent if you must.

AC:R has some very minor differences in gameplay from AC:B or really any of the other games. These minor changes have made this game incredibly frustrating for me. Some of the new features are about as annoying. Here's my list:

- You can now be hit by another soldier while in one of Ezio's elaborate kill animations that you have no control over whether he continues it or not. If your lucky you might be able to pull off a haphazard counter.

- Counters are much harder to execute. The window of time is very small and in many cases beyond reason. Part of this may be due to the fact that simple militia men are few and the stronger classes are ever present.

- You can now take over small dens throughout the city. Once you take it over it may be contested in which you have to enter into a den defense mini game. The mini game (similar to a tower defense game) is somewhat hard to operate, but the challenge is not ridiculous until the last wave when a siege machine comes. The siege weapons are very hard to kill and must be completely destroyed despite the fact that all the operators are completely exposed. You also have an indirect artillery piece that you'd think would be perfect for doing some decent damage but every time you attempt to hit it it will seem to barely miss (it will never hit it and will never miss for anything else). You can spend your moral (currency to buy more units) to upgrade your barricades, buy hand to hand fighters, and sappers but none of these units have any effect on the machine. It is possible to spend a large portion of your morale on a barricade (which once again is great for infantry) but it will be destroyed in a matter of seconds by the machine. Despite all of this winning is easy: simply start to permeate your slots with riflemen and grenadiers (if they're unlocked yet) and use your artillery well to repel the infantry until the machine comes and hopefully you'll have enough raw firepower to destroy it. This is the only way I've found to win. That said nothing else in this mini-game can be used and the game becomes a boring nuisance. This leads us to what causes you dens to come under attack...

- Reducing notoriety is now very costly and time consuming, and worst of all it actually matters now if you hate den defense as much as I do because if you let the meter fill all the way up then one of your dens will be attacked. There are no longer wanted posters every where you go as in AC:B. They only way to reduce your notoriety now is to bribe heralds or kill Public Officials. Public officials are hard to come by and are annoying to drop what your doing and go after. Heralds not only cost money but are also not as common as one would like and only reduce notoriety by 25%. Notoriety also has little to no effect on how quickly guards notice you as far as I can tell. It's really like all the templars are on high alert all the time now. Notoriety is now simply a chore you have to do to keep from doing another chore (den defense). The good news is that once you assign an assassin to a den and then manage to max him/her out the den can no longer be contested, but until then for those of you like me who enjoy running around the city with 100% notoriety getting into the biggest fights possible you are likely to have every den you own under attack by the end of one of those stunts.

- Getting around in general is much harder. Not harder in a new challenge kind of way but frustrating, limiting what you can do kind of way. It's hard to put into words but something about the climbing seems less smooth. Ezio will often simply stop climbing as if confused about what you want to do even through the next hold point is just above him. The city also seems to be just harder to climb in general. If you want to flee to the rooftops you better look all the way up the wall first because theres about a 30% chance that you'll get halfway up and realize that there is no next hold point even though the roof is not much higher (No, the hook blade does not make much of a difference).

- In addition to an encumbered ability to make it to the roof, once you get there there I would say that there's about an 80% chance there will be a guard there waiting for you with a gun. Maybe not on your roof but definitely on an adjacent roof. There is virtually no chance that they will not see you unless their back happens to be directly towards you. They also do not tell you to get down first as in prior games; engagement is immediate.They do not miss for any reason. Their range of sight (seemingly in peripheral and distance) feels greater than in prior games and is definitely greater than yours. To shoot enemies that are not right in front of you you must lock onto them. The range limit in which you may lock onto a target is significantly shorter than the range that they can engage you from. Some are in small boxes that makes them unable to be killed with anything but a ranged attack. If you are already in a melee fight getting him to throw a knife at the box rather than your attackers is next to impossible. Unboxed gunmen understandably back away from you as they shoot/load/aim. When you attempt to close the distance with them Ezio will usually automatically go into combat mode in which he will stop running and begin his slow careful combat creep. To break this you can hit L and resume running toward him but often this is not enough to make up for the lost time and you will be shot. Once you get to the rifleman do not expect an easy kill. They are very skilled at blocking your sword/hidden blade with their rifles. You must perform a combo kill (three quick hits in a row). The problem with this is that since they back up as much as they can to put distance between you and himself he is almost certainly standing on the edge at this point. After the first or second hit he will fall off the edge. This seems great, but they take next to no damage from falls unless from an extreme height. Also they can climb faster than you (even while carrying a rifle) so don't expect a long time to escape. My advice is to not even bother with the roof unless you have to.

That said, there are some fresh new concepts in AC:R. I won't list them, they are all listed in the professional review, but honestly it just makes the problems even more inexcusable because the game could've been so great. They changed things that didn't need to be changed and as a result, I find myself frustrated and forcing myself to play. I definitively regret buying this game. As for other fans of the franchise I highly suggest renting first.

Unfortunately, I agree with you on almost all of this. I didn't have many problems with the notoriety, since the den defense was such a hassle I made tracking down heralds a priority until I had all my dens locked down. I found the rooftop guards do give you a warning if you're not on "alert" status, but I try to just run away rather than waste time killing them off.

I did, however, have a whole lot of frustrating experiences with the camera swinging wildly, causing "up" on the left analog to change from "run forward" to "leap to your death." Or, the camera getting stuck in tree branches during swordfights.

It's definitely my least favorite in the series, which is a shame because I was looking forward to it so badly.

In some ways the series has definitely taken a step or two backwards so I do agree with you in some ways. I think they took some of the new ideas a bit too far more than anything else. I like the idea of the camera moving to give a more epic view of the environment, but the fact that it can't be changed and the frequency with which it occurs drag it down.

The more frustrating change to me was how strong the Janissaries are. For the first time in the series I felt weak. I don't mind a good challenge, but that's crazy. The papal guards in AC:B were overhyped and just plain easy to kill, but the Janissaries went too far. They're fast enough to keep up on the ground, and they just refuse to die. In AC:B the agile guards could catch you sure, but the brutes were slow to compensate for their extra armor. The Janissaries don't really have a weakness. You can't attack, counterkill, grab, or even kick them; you can steal from them, but that doesn't do you any good. The only good ways to kill them involve bombs(overhyped) or throwing knives. And, as if that wasn't enough, they're everywhere!

The changes to the weapons were a mixed bag. The throwing knives haven't been good since the first game, so it was nice to have those back as a functional option, but not at the expense of the crossbow. Shooting anything other than a rooftop guard with that thing is useless. Before the game was released Ubisoft kept pushing the bombs, as a huge new feature, but the only ones I used were smoke bombs. They would be better, but they're awkward to use in combat and it's too easy to kill civilians if you throw them at guards on patrol. It's just plain annoying to get warning messages about killing civilians every time you want to kill a group of guards.

I'm not going to get started about the den defenses because I have nothing new to add to that.

The thing that killed me most was how short the single player was. I don't mind that they added multiplayer in AC:B, but it's starting to take over the series. The story was what made the series huge in the first place and now that's suffering to appeal to the multiplayer crowd.

Now that I'm done complaining, I think there are some huge improvements in AC:R. The hookblade was a lot of fun. It sped up the climbing, and added to combat in interesting ways. The ziplines, though illogical, sped up travel and were just plain fun. Using the hanging pots to longjump was a great way to escape the guards. I also think that Constantinople was most interesting city the series has ever done. Its diversity and architecture made it a joy to explore. Sure Renaissance Italy was gorgeous and majestic, but Constantinople feels more real, maybe because there's more socioeconomic diversity. Yusuf and Sofia were interesting new characters as well. In AC:B it felt like the cast from AC 2 was shoehorned into Rome where they didn't really fit, so it was nice to see new faces. The range of new ways to recruit assassins was a nice change and I also appreciated the fact that you can interact with them a little, it makes you care a bit rather than just seeing them as another weapon.

I don't think the game as a whole sucks, I do think that the development team added some things that no one was asking for; and I believe that single player suffered because of the success of multiplayer, but that issue effects every series that does both.

I HATE DEN DEFENSE! i stay hidden as much as possible. multiplayer took leaps and bounds, especialy in giving more depth. some of the "thrilling" moments that were supposed to change up the gameplay kinda threw me off the assassins creed path and totally felt awkward and mini game like. it was a good game, but i hope that if they make one to conclude the series that it ditches all this confusing mini game crap.

so it wasnt as fun as brotherhood. People keep focusing on the bad but there were some improvements. Despite what everyone says, the first person parts become more interesting the more of them you do. Although the den defense is not fun at all, the whole aspect of taking back all the cities showed more of the whole assassins against templars. I just hope Ubi will learn from the mistakes, and make AC 3 awesome

Sure it wasn't the best AC release..but it was still pretty awesome. Loved den defense. Thing that irritated most were the Desmond Memories. They could have thought of something better. And I wish the end puzzle to Altair cave was more challenging.. All in all.. Still a fan.. Cant wait for AC3